Why China’s Box Office Is Madly in Love With Romances of the Rich

It’s the $3-billion question: What kind of movies do Chinese audiences want to see?

Lately, the answer seems to be glossy romances set in highly developed cities. Blockbusters “Tiny Times,” a glitzy teenage love story set in Shanghai, and “Beijing Love Story,” a collection of stories about well-heeled couples in the capital, dominated billboards and the box office in the last year.

And yet, well-heeled moviegoers in the country’s biggest cities seem to have little love for the romance craze.

“Tiny Times” is “not a movie for grown-ups,” says Jiao Chunhua, an editor at a publishing company in Beijing who says she only saw the movie because of the hype. Ms. Jiao, 24 years old, doesn’t have any friends who enjoys such films, she says, adding “this type of movie mostly attracts teenagers, especially those in China’s second and third-tier cities.”

Ms. Jiao’s hunch is confirmed by recent data from Entgroup, an entertainment industry consultancy, showing that 2013 was the first year in which China’s first-tier cities accounted for less than half of box-office revenue at 48%.

The taste of China’s “small town” youth is having an increasing impact on the minds of movies that get made and get attention in theaters, says Raymond Zhou, one of China’s most prominent film critics. “Teenage girls in first-tier cities already know what life is like there,” he says. “They know movies like ‘Tiny Times’ offer hugely exaggerated portrayals of big city life. But girls in second- and third-tier cities have never seen that kind of life and aspire to it.”

Such preferences have major implications in a rapidly expanding film industry. China’s box offices pulled in 21.6 billion yuan ($3.17 billion) in 2013, a 27% jump from the year before, according to consulting firm Artisan Gateway. The “taste divide” between glamour-obsessed moviegoers from lesser-known places and more sophisticated big city audiences is likely to influence the country’s film industry for years to come, Mr. Zhou says.

The success of films like “Tiny Times,” which is based on a novel of the same name by writer-director Guo Jingming and has already spawned a sequel (with another on the way), is not only due to demand from second-tier cities. Regulation also plays a role.

Nicole Talmacs, a researcher of film and class in China at Sydney University, points out the fine line between pleasing both censors and investors. “Chinese film is all about positivity, optimism, and portraying modernity,” she explains. “Love stories are safe, especially when they are about love between people of the same class, as is always the case in these movies.”

Fine, but as a recent discussion on Zhihu, China’s version of the question-and-answer site Quora, asked, why does Chinese film seem almost exclusively interested in the love stories of rich people?

As in the U.S., product placement opportunities also play a big role in determining what movies get seen, analysts say. Simply by virtue of being larded with luxury goods, Ms. Talmacs says, films like “Tiny Times” and “Beijing Love Story” (which set a Valentine’s day box office record) have more money to spend on production quality, location shoots and star power. China makes movies about poor couples, they just don’t make it into theaters very often, she says.

Jia Zhangke, one of the most successful of independent-minded film directors in China, lamented these financial dynamics in a recent interview with China Real Time. “The entire film industry seems to have decided that we can only learn from Hollywood,” he said. While there are some independent initiatives in place to support local talent, including a program run by his own production company X-Stream Pictures, large-scale efforts to diversify the industry are lacking, he said. “If, in a few years, we run out of money or lose interest, [our program] will stop,” he said. “There is nothing being put in place to benefit all of society.”

Mr. Zhou agrees, saying he thinks the “quick money” trend in Chinese movie making is a sad development. “It is not the lack of talent,” he says. “Good scripts get turned down in favor of more of the same. It is the market and the investors.”

Perhaps the most damning statement on the quality of Chinese films was recently delivered by the China Film Directors’ Guild, which last week declined to hand out annual awards for best picture and best director, citing a lack of worthy candidates. (Mr. Jia’s most recent film, “A Touch of Sin,” was ineligible because it wasn’t approved to screen inside China.)

For her part, Ms. Jiao, who was born in central China’s Henan province, believes smaller city audiences are ready for better movies, too. “Guo might be able to fool kids, but actually back where I grew up, young people are just as interested in meaningful films and discussion as here in Beijing.”